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The E.P.A. Fantasy: Science Conquers All

Now that the Supreme Court has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide from cars, which of these scenarios is most likely?

a) The E.P.A.’s scientists will determine the proper level of emissions, and the agency will promptly order carmakers to comply.

b) The scientists’ recommendations will be ignored by the Bush administration, but promptly adopted by the next president.

c) No matter who is elected, no matter what E.P.A.’s scientists recommend, nothing will happen anytime soon.

If history is any guide, the right answer is c. Ordering the E.P.A. to address global warming may be a legal victory for environment groups, but it will probably just slow progress against global warming. The Environmental Procrastination Agency, as I like to call it, has a hard enough time taking action against routine pollutants. It’s in even worse position to deal with something as complicated as carbon dioxide, because the agency was founded on a fantasy: that scientific experts can transcend both politics and economics.

This was a convenient fantasy for members of Congress who wanted to duck tough decisions. They grandly ordered the E.P.A. to clean up the environment no matter what the cost. Its experts were to be above politics, and they were even forbidden to consider economic tradeoffs: they were supposed to make a scientific determination of safety and then order everyone to comply.

It sounded wonderful — until the experts actually tried ordering anything that was unpopular or expensive. Then they found themselves tied up in endless lawsuits and behind-the-scenes political maneuvering. It took the agency 15 years to deal with pollution from leaded gasoline, which was a trivially simple problem compared with global warming. It’s a lot easier to estimate the health consequences of lead pollution than to scientifically determine a “safe” level of carbon dioxide. Yes, reducing emissions means lower risks from climate change, but climate scientists don’t have any special expertise in figuring out how to make reductions. It takes economists to estimate the tradeoffs — and politicians to work out the compromises.

My favorite guide to the E.P.A. is David Schoenbrod, who sued to force the E.P.A. to take lead out of gasoline in the 1970s, when he was a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The environmentalists won in court. But as Mr. Schoenbrod watched the agency dither, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, he became convinced that the lawsuit hadn’t really been a victory — that lawmakers at the state and federal levels would have been forced to act sooner if the problem hadn’t been delegated to the E.P.A. In his 2005 book, “Saving Our Environment from Washington,” he proposes putting pressure on politicans by turning the E.P.A. from a regulatory agency into one that offers technical guidance to Congress and state legislatures.

Mr. Schoenbrod, now a professor at New York Law School, is not celebrating the latest “victory” by environmentalists. “The Supreme Court was correct in deciding that the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate all pollutants, including global warming gases,” he says. “What makes no sense is the premise of the Clean Air Act that Congress can solve all pollution problems by handing them over to the EPA. History shows that is wrong.”

So what does he expect? Lots of litigation and little action. “Hard choices will have to be made and the agency lacks the legitimacy to make them,” he says, “so the tendency will be to delay or make symbolic choices for as long as possible.”

UPDATE (Thursday, April 5): Some readers complain that I didn’t give the E.P.A. enough credit for the environmental progress in the past few decades. But the air and water were getting cleaner before the E.P.A. was founded, and in some ways it has slowed progress, as Mr. Schoenbrod explains today in this essay in the Wall Street Journal.

I just discovered your blog recently after following a pointer from Chris Mooney.

I agree with the general tone of your argument. The tendency is to say “hey, that’s the EPA’s problem,” but why can’t we keep the EPA as a regulatory agency and also put pressure on Congress to take action? This isn’t an either/or issue.

There are regulations in place that the EPA (or someone) must enforce, so getting rid of it just puts the day-to-day function somewhere else. Congress — and let’s not forget the Executive branch of government — does need to act decisively in spite of there being hard choices to make. And citizens need to learn about the issues and provide the support to the legislators to find their backbones and elect legislators who know where theirs are.

Meaningful action on global warming and environment degradation will require a change in the economy and our lifestyles. With intelligent action now those changes can be very positive and not all gloom and doom.

When a Tsunami comes and take everything from us ,we find ourselves facing a great disaster ,and we begin so rapidly to deal with it .But when a poor man ask us an old shoes before the impact of the Tsunami we find it’s a big loss that we cannot support!.
I think this example is the exact problem facing the E.P.A
Every drop of oil is used for some economic purpose inside or outside the U.S ,and when President Bush talk about addiction to oil ,he mean very clear addiction to machines devouring oil each day.
If we ask the people to leave some modern behaviors for the sake of environment ,it will be a heavy endurance to make it willingly.
Because all economic and social fields are linked together ,to clean environment from CO2 gaz and other pollutants we should first find a “Way of Life Neuter toward Nature” ,and pollutants will be dramatically reduced permanently.
It’s simply like breast implants ,the best one is the one who don’t harm the body even many years after being in function.

Grim, but true. And actually only a small piece of the problem. It may be time for us to face an extremely unpleasant truth- our societal decision making process, in the USA, is almost irretrievably broken. It’s a symptom of cultural senility- and history has horrific stories to tell about what happens to countries mired in governmental chaos. China, the only surviving ancient culture, has only found one solution- burn the country to the ground, and start over. We need to work on finding some way to avoid that.

I’m sorry, but every time I see someone state that the middle class has been destroyed, I roll my eyes. The only class in danger in the US is the poorest. They keep being eroded into the middle class. If you disagree, just look at any standard measure of well-being and compare today to 30 years ago.

The rest of your argument is similarly fact free.

The environment is cleaned up when a society becomes wealthy enough to worry about the environment.

As for CO2, we can talk all we want, but until it becomes feasible to recycle CO2 from flue gases into biomass, there will be no meaningful change in our output of CO2. We’re waiting on small companies testing innovative approaches for growing algae as fuel, not on the EPA.

Once CO2 is considered food for the next generation of biofuels, we won’t talk so much about how much of it is being dumped on the environment, but who has access to all that clear odorless gold.

One possible model for energy involves using pyrolisis to convert biomass (wood, grasses etc.) into syngas and char. The syngas will be burned in the same manner as natural gas and the char could be used as soil amendment (see info on terra preta). The exhaust from the combustion of syngas could be used to grow algae with the resulting biomass converted to liquid fuels, burned or gasified.

In this way, carbon in the form of char would be sequestered in farmland and the CO2 recycled through algae would enter a closed loop to keep it out of the atmosphere as it is reused over and over to grow new fuel. And the primary fuel to begin the whole process would be recently harvested biomass whose carbon was recently drawn from the air.

The EPA can’t dictate this development, but by enacting some rational policies with respect to energy security and carbon dioxide, the Congress could create an economic environment that would cause more businesses to seek out that sort of innovative approach.

We need a dramatic shift in policy. Federally fund all road construction and maintenance with dramatically higher taxes on gasoline, ending the subsidy for horribly polluting inefficient vehicles. Savings can be used to superfund aggressive high-speed rail projects between major metropolitan markets, thus creating jobs, reducing the need for ever bigger and costlier highways, and positioning our nations infrastructure for a more sustainable future.

The facts and economic numbers do not support Dr. Klein’s apparently knee jerk statement. Advanced pollution controls and industral resource recovery often pays for itself. In cases where it doesn’t, it is an extremely minor factor when compared to labor costs. The $1500/car cost differential between GM and Toyota is not from pollution controls but from pension and medical insurance costs. Perhaps Dr. Klein would not mind his kids playing with PCB’s, dioxin, lead, arsenic and asbestos, but I prefer having healthy children that I do not have to send to his place of business.

I don’t disagree with the thesis that the EPA is slow moving beast, nor that it is slow in times of Democratic and Republican rule. However this sort of superficial analysis ignores the role that major industries play in slowing down legislative or administrative changes-from gasoline additives to emissions standards. Moreover this sort of thin process analysis pervades our political discource.

Take a similar case at the federal level but pertaining to our national finances. Over the past decade Republican anti-government legislators have pushed our budget into imbalance with fiscally irresponsible policies. We know have trillions of dollars in debt that will take us generations to dig out from. Those same legislators now make the case that the federal government is incapable of safeguarding national finances and we ought to drastically scale back our federal spending.

The problem isn’t inherently the EPA, just like our government isn’t inherently incapable of balanced finances. The problem is that we let industry have too much of a say in how our system is constructed and people keep electing anti-government legislators.

What is wrong with this type of analysis isn’t just that it’s superficial and uninteresting but that it encourages people to give up. “The EPA will never be efficient so we shouldn’t even bother. Our government is inefficient and wasteful so we shouldn’t have social security.” Wrong. The EPA is traditionally bogged down by process and politics and we have a responsbility as a society to push beyond the narrow corporate interests tat drive policy to find real solutions.

I hope that on an issue as critical as global warming our politicians get beyond the veneer of process and actually address the core problems. I’d expect our writers to do the same.

I feel like I’m reading George Orwell. Hasn’t anyone noticed that the air is much cleaner now than it was in 1970?! Back then you could barely see the Manhattan Slyline from Brooklyn. There are spectacular examples everywhere of water quality improvements: the Potomac was a stinking slimey sewer in 1976–today Washington DC hosts a world class bass fishery; then there’s Lake Erie, the Cuyahoga River that burned and today has yacht cruises to the Lake. EPA may be slow but the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act have worked. Oh, and it was Ronald Reagan who destroyed the middle class not environmental regulation.

Without the EPA’s enforcement of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and Superfund, our industrial base would have been strangled by outdated, inefficient technology. The middle class would be in far worse shape — contending both with increased environmental toxins and an increasingly out of step industrial economy.

The greatness of this country was built by a fascistically fettered democratic system which subverts the fickle, often irrational, whims of the majority in favor of what the people actually need as expressed by our free market system that grants governmental power to successful people and organizations (e.g. Cheney, Bush, ExxonMobil).

Think about it! Thanks to the Iraq invasion we will soon enjoy cheaper oil than we would have. You know Hussein would have done this to us.

And yes Global Warming is real, but if we can make the other more “socialist” and developing countries pay, then why not take advantage of them?

Remember you’re *ENJOYING* the fruits of a system that makes no bones of taking advantage of others for your benefit.

Sorry, Dr. Klein, but the United States would have beeen deindustrialized with or without environmental protections.
Globalization happened because it made the world one marketplace for labor, but with multiple marketplaces for business.
The middle class was destroyed by greed at the top, and also with the connivance of hangers-on all the way down the ladder, all willing to do anything in the hope of sharing the crumbs left by the top – you name it – one percent, five percent.
Full points for a novel approach, want to try again?

I believe you’re overlooking the very real liberation the ruling gives states to address CO2 emissions, particularly California which has a unique relationship with air quality standards embodied in the Clean Air Act. Given the size of the auto market in CA, that market has the potential to drive engine emissions throughout the country. You may be right that EPA lacks the ability to address the issue, but without the court as a backstop preventing their action, manufacturers and industrial sources will be driven by market forces: a much bigger hammer than any regulator carries.

Dr. Klein – environmental regulation did not “deindustrialize[] the United States and destroy[] the middle class.” Serious studies show that companies that go green save millions of dollars, as they find themselves using less electricity, water, etc. And if any industry were affected by environmental regulation, it would have been farming, as a large number of pesticides, etc., were banned since the 1970s. Yet farm yields are if anything higher than they were thirty years ago. Also, environmental compliance accounts for maybe a percent of total industrial costs – not nearly enough to justify outsourcing factory jobs (the risk of currency fluctuations is considerably higher). Environmentalism might be an easy excuse for the failures of the American economy in the past thirty years, but they are just that – excuses – and have no bearing on reality.

I find your premise interesting, but would point out that EPA has an enforcement role that would have to be replicated by some other agency were the EPA abolished. Aside from this, I don’t believe that many environmentalists think the Supreme Court ruling is the end of the fight. You are correct: the ruling simply says that EPA can’t refuse to enforce a standard, not that it must enforce a certain standard. Congress will have to pass new legislation with explicit standards, which I think there is a good chance of. Even when legislation passes, there is the matter of getting the executive to enforce the law. The courts may have to be brought in again. However, a willing executive, armed with specific legislation, can speed up the process.

Forget the EPA, forget the Supreme Court. It’s true, nothing will come of nothing. The United States needs to wake up and help in being a member of an Environmental Global Protection Force that involves all countries in solving this environmental global crisis. Of course the countries producing the highest number of pollutants have more responsibility for the progression of global warming and environmental pollution, but it will take the smaller countries to create change. The United States cannot set up any future plan to remedy these problems alone through legislation or scientific persuasion. The damage is done. There is no doubt the Earth is suffering from the by-products from industrialized countries. It will take more than the rumblings in our government and science community. Quick, someone start a world-wide Environmental Global Protection Force that includes as many countries as possible. Unfortunately, our government, which used to care more about the world than it’s own interests, will hold up legislation, changes to car manufacturing, etc., for the same reason. This is a global problem that needs to be met by a global community!

Hard choices indeed! Whether in philosophy, science, or mathematics, only when you correctly posit the question can you hope to arrive at a solution. What is the question we are asking the EPA to solve?

The Supreme Court confirmed what was already known: the US already has significant statutory authority to start addressing greenhouse gas emissions. What is needed is an Executive with the will to take action and build public and Congressional support for such action. Even the Chief Executive concedes global warming is human caused and now it is just about wrangling over solutions. The Supreme Court decision will be action forcing as potentially affected industries will press for regulatory and statutory solutions now rather than take the chance of a Congress and different Chief Executive more disposed to stronger action in 2009. Look for the California greenhouse gas standards to become the blueprint for a new set of nationwide standards.

Clearly, Doctor Klein, since environmental compliance costs are considerably larger than the differential in labor costs and tax regimes between countries. Oh, wait…

As to the subject at hand, while I don’t have high hopes for the EPA, there are a number of important ancillary benefits from the supreme court decision. First, it frees up states to take domestic action to regulate CO2 emissions from vehicles (well, at least to follow California’s lead). The proliferation of state initiatives creates an onerous patchwork of regulations for industry, who than lobby congress for a predictable uniform federal standard.

Second, the court decision allows a future administration to regulate CO2 via administrative rather than legislative process. For better or worse, this could allow a more progressively minded president to enact stronger limits than congress would otherwise pass.

We had better do something fast and do it on a worldwide basis. The government will have to take the lead since US capitalism does not work for this global warming problem without considerable prodding and incentives from the government. Incentives, carbon/CO2/mileage taxes, etc. need to be used by the government to change behavior. 4% of the world’s population and 30% of world’s greenhouse gases. If we do not take action the resulting environmental changes “could” be cataclysmic.

If inaction on emissions remains the status quo, that will be a shame.

The press have called this a “landmark ruling for good reason. The real significance of it is that it’s really about the legal concept of “standing” or who has the right to litigate in the courts.

All of the conservative members denounced the Court’s acceptance of it denying that Massachusetts had sufficient standing. (Roberts also argued that this case belonged in Congress not the courts)

Thomas Jefferson and James Madision would have found that any of the states had “insufficient standing” to seek redress against grievences against the “Central Government” in the courts completely abhorent. Any such notion at the time of our founding would have been – to such staunch “States’ Rights” advocates – cause for the dissolution of the Articles of The Confederation.

It seems that the conservative jurists were worried that this is a step down a slippery slope and that a floodtide of litigation by aggrieved states might open.

One of the wisest of founders, Ben Franklin, famously quipped after the Constitution was ratified: “We have a democracy if we can keep it.” As all of the players knew at the time, our democracy depended on some glue to bind the states together of thier own volition as much as any legal right bestowed upon the individual.

That glue was the notion that states rights were not trumped by the power of the Central Government. And as every cadet who attended West Point until the Civil War was taught, the states had the right to secede from the Union. That concept was never questioned until Lincoln.

Going forward nowadays, Lincoln notwithstanding, holding the the states together is going to require more glue than the Supreme Court has the capacity to dispense. Maybe Roberts is smart enough to know that.

After 218 years since the ratification of the Constitution our democracy is all still very much in experimental mode and it’s still all about states’ rights.

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About

John Tierney always wanted to be a scientist but went into journalism because its peer-review process was a great deal easier to sneak through. Now a columnist for the Science Times section, Tierney previously wrote columns for the Op-Ed page, the Metro section and the Times Magazine. Before that he covered science for magazines like Discover, Hippocrates and Science 86.

With your help, he's using TierneyLab to check out new research and rethink conventional wisdom about science and society. The Lab's work is guided by two founding principles:

Just because an idea appeals to a lot of people doesn't mean it's wrong.

But that's a good working theory.

Comments and suggestions are welcome, particularly from researchers with new findings. E-mail tierneylab@nytimes.com.